MA Migration, Society and Policy Programme Leader Dr Alessio D’Angelo is a member of the Middlesex team working on ‘EVI-MED – Constructing an Evidence Base of Mediterranean Migrations’, an ESRC-DFID project. In his latest blog post, he argues that the Italian ‘hotspot’ approach to the migrant crisis may soon backfire.

When visiting Rome a few days ago, the European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker praised Italy’s implementation of the hotspot approach as a model for other European countries on how to manage the current refugee crisis. As I argued before, the Italian ‘roadmap’ on migration has paid its political dividends at the expense of human rights and legality.

The practices within the so-called ‘hotspots’ have received wide condemnation among human rights activists: fingerprinting takes place, even with the use of force; people are kept for periods much longer than the Italian legislation would allow; and the living conditions go from poor…

MA Migration, Society and Policy Programme Leader Dr Alessio D’Angelo is a member of the Middlesex team working on ‘EVI-MED – Constructing an Evidence Base of Mediterranean Migrations’, an ESRC-DFID project. In his latest blog post, he reports from Sicily where the ‘hotspot approach’ has dramatically altered the landscape of Italy’s migrant crisis.

Over the last few months the so-called migrant crisis in the Mediterranean has been described in terms of ‘chaos’. These or related terms have been used with particular regard to the situation in Greece, which – according to the official statistics – saw nearly one million sea arrivals between January 2015 and January 2016. The ‘chaos’, however, is not in the numbers.

Reception crisis

This is, on the one hand, a crisis of international and European politics – the diplomatic stand-offs of the last few days show it quite clearly – and on the other, it is a

Middlesex University is launching a new MA Migration, Society and Policy

With migration regularly at the top of the European and global agenda, the need for skilled professionals who can make sense of the raw data, grasp complex policy systems and assess their impact on contemporary societies is more apparent than ever.

This master’s degree offers a contemporary and interdisciplinary focus on migration and related socio-political and policy issues, combining theoretical, methodological and practice-oriented training relevant to a number of career routes in academia, policymaking, the public sector, the community sector and NGOs.

It features a wide range of study options from disciplines such as law, politics and sociology, as well as incorporating opportunities to undertake field trips, placements and internships, both locally and internationally.

The European Toolkit for Schools is now online! It gives access to measures and resources from many EU countries to support effective and high quality education. The toolkit follows 2 years of work of the European Commission Working Group on Early School Leaving, which included representatives and experts from across Europe.

Really glad to have played my part in this exciting process as an advisor to the Working Group – and looking forward to further developments!

Organised by the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), this conference will bring together stakeholders, policy makers and researchers working on education and school-to-work transitions at a European, national and local level.

My colleagues and I will present the preliminary findings of an extensive survey with schools across several sites in England, carried out as part of the wide-scale EU-funded project, Reducing Early School Leaving in Europe (RESL.eu).

legal aid cuts and experiences of accessing justice for those in need
November 9th, 2015, London

I am co-convening this event on the impact of legal aid and other funding cuts on access to justice for those in need. The initiative is funded by the Social Policy Association (SPA) and organised in partnership between Middlesex University and Toynbee Hall.

Here is a new update of the map of Kurdish community organisations. I have added a few more and introduced a visual classification, also plotting important organisations which are now closed. As usual, if you have any feedback on the map (did I forget anything important? Any inaccuracy you can spot?) please send me an […]

Seminar – London Kurdish Institute and SOAS Kurdish Society Tuesday, 8 April 2014 from 19:00 to 21:00 Speaker: Dr İsmail Beşikçi “The Turkish sociologist İsmail Beşikçi is one of the most prominent scholar in the field of Kurdish studies. He started his academic career at Atatürk University in Erzurum as an assistant professor where he […]